Sean Thomas is a novelist, journalist and travel writer. He also publishes thrillers under the name Tom Knox. He is currently writing a memoir of his extremely misspent youth, and similarly misspent adulthood, and tweets under the name @thomasknox.

As anyone with a nagging cough has noticed, Her Majesty’s Government is right now going through one of its asthmatic fits of indecision when it comes to Smoking. Some say we should prohibit branded fag packets forever, anti-nanny-staters say it is up to the yellow-fingered Brits themselves whether they choose to puff a gasper, we don’t need to chivvy them with freakshow photos of tarry lungs and cankered jawbones.

Usually, when it comes to debates like this, I err on the side of liberty. As long as it doesn’t especially hurt anyone else, I say: let people ingest, inject or inhale whatever they like. And yet, of late, I’ve had an anti-fag epiphany. Because tobacco is different to other drugs.

Before I go any further I should show that I know whereof I speak. I'm a former drug addict – now happily reformed, I should add.

Here's a list of All The Drugs I Have Ever Done, all the substances I have consumed in an attempt to alter my mind.

Valium

Marijuana

LSD

Codeine

Dihydrocodeine

Perfume

Temazepam

Morphine Sulphate

Hashish

Hash Oil

Opium

Amphetamine Sulphate

Captagon

Xanax

Dexedrine

Gees Linctus

Nitrous Oxide

DMT

Ephedrine

Amyl Nitrate

Heroin

Cocaine

Nutmeg

Morning Glory Seeds

Ecstasy

Tobacco

Cinnamon

Alcohol

Qat

Freebase cocaine

Psilocybin Mushrooms

Crack

Tippex

Perhaps you are surprised by some of these drugs, perhaps you are bemused, bothered or bloody uninterested. And fair enough. Either way I adduce this list merely to prove one thing: I know my narcotics. I’ve done them all, from Captagon (a kind of speed, that you used to be able to buy over the counter in Bangkok) to Nutmeg (a bit of a disappointment – I was home from University in the holidays, unable to source pukka drugs, when I happened upon a herbal encyclopedia on the family shelves, which implied that nutmeg has mild psychodelic qualities. It doesn’t) to DMT (an obscure but very powerful hallucinogen, also known as Businessman's Acid, because its effects are so intense but, crucially, so brief. With DMT you can, theoretically, trip wildly for about ten minutes, then return to normal – meaning you can take it in your lunchbreak and then go back to biz).

And, you know what, all of these drugs had their appeal. They were either harmless-and-silly (cinnamon), agreeable-but-addictive (Xanax), amazing-but-scary (LSD), or preternaturally seductive yet lethally voluptuous (heroin).

All that is, apart from just one. Tobacco.

As a former polymorphic drug abuser, I can say, with some authority, that Cigarettes Suck. Nicotine is the most pathetic drug known to man: it has very little mental effect other than alleviating the addiction it induces. On the flipside, it makes you smell, it makes you cough, it makes you look old, it makes you look like some desperate twit gulping down a lungful of poison outside the pub/office/funeral, in the ludicrous belief that this wretched display of meaningless addiction affords you some non-existent glamour, like a hobo frantically rubbing his crotch outside an art college who believes this is the equivalent of having a sensitive, beautiful girlfriend. And after that, of course, tobacco kills you. In horrible ways.

Smokers are, therefore, losers. But smokers aren’t just losers, smokers are sad stupid selfish losers inflicting their pungent sociopathy on the rest of us; smokers are petulant failures who haven’t got the guts to get addicted to a proper satisfying dangerously delicious drug, like heroin, or a gloriously antique and disinhibiting psychotropic like alcohol. Yet because of their miserable, dependent cowardice we all have to pay through the throat for their malodorous “habit” as they cough their slow but remorseless way to death via the NHS, my taxes, and sixteen thousand fag butts littering our streets.

So here’s what I say to the Government, as they hesitate over “non branded” packets, and as they contemplate ever more surreal measures like prohibiting e-cigarettes in public spaces because they encourage the "concept" of smoking: just get on with it. We all know where this ends, so why pussy around. Just Do It. Just Ban It. Just ban smoking altogether.